New Project to Save Greece: 'For a Donation of 3,000 Euros, Every Greek Can Buy Freedom'

A mural by graffiti artist "Blu" in Thessaloniki.

Πηγή: Spiegel
Interview by Carsten Volkery
June 29 2012

Greek shipping heir Peter Nomikos has taken matters into his own hands. While EU leaders wrangle for a solution to Greece's problems, Nomikos started a non-profit to wipe out the country's debt. If all of his countrymen do their part, he tells SPIEGEL ONLINE, they will be able to shore up the country's finances.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Nomikos, you have just started a campaign to free Greece of debt. Your organization buys up Greek bonds and then forgives the debt. Are you serious?

Nomikos: Professionally, I deal with distressed debt. And it struck me that Greece has a historical opportunity. In the euro, the Greeks have a very strong currency, while the price of their government bonds has collapsed. That makes it possible to buy back debt at very low prices and reduce the Greek debt burden with relatively little expenditure.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You are asking your countrymen for donations. What do you tell them?

Nomikos: If you break down the national debt, each Greek owes around €25,000 ($31,485). So I am telling my fellow citizens to make themselves debt-free. Greek government bonds with a nominal value of one euro currently trade for around 12 cents. For a donation of around €3,000, every Greek can buy his freedom.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How many bonds has your foundation already bought?

Nomikos: We always buy those bonds that have the deepest discount. So far we have invested €273,000 ($343,816) and hold €2.2 million ($2.8 million) in Greek debt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And then you cancel the debt?

Nomikos: Not immediately. If we did that, we would decrease the impact of our project. When the GDP-to-debt ratio goes down, bond prices go up. If the movement becomes a great success, this could become a problem, because we cannot buy debt as cheaply on the markets. So we hold these bonds for a while and use any profits to buy more bonds. We plan to amass as many bonds as possible and then cancel the debt all at once.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Have you set yourself a specific goal?

Nomikos: We just started collecting donations last weekend. We'll see how it develops.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your first supporter was ship owner Evangelos Marinakis, the owner of Greece's biggest football club Olympiakos Piräus. He donated €168,590 ($212,322). How did you get him involved?

Nomikos: I called him about four weeks ago to ask if he would use our logo and message in his communications for Olympiakos FC. He immediately said yes. Half of Greece supports Olympiakos, so this was a big moment. Then I asked him whether he wanted to buy the freedom of his players. He said: I'll also buy the freedom of my employees. So he paid for 55 people -- €3,065 ($3,860) each.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who else has signed up thus far?

Nomikos: I have paid for 34 members of my family. But this is not about me asking rich friends to join. It is about the majority of Greeks helping their country. This campaign will only work if it becomes a social movement. People will look at each other and ask: What have you done to battle the debt?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wouldn't it be easier if all Greeks started paying their taxes?

Nomikos: The difference is that with taxes, you don't know what they are being used for. There is a lack of trust in the state, and I am not going to pretend that I can solve this cultural problem. But Greeks are also great patriots, and I think we should harness this feeling. A euro for "Debt-free Greece" is not a euro in taxes lost. It is complementary.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the reaction from the Greek government?

Nomikos: Many people in the government and the diplomatic community find our campaign very encouraging. But remember, we are non-political and non-governmental. It is the first real show of a private Greek citizen to organize other Greeks to address our biggest problem. It shows to the world that we are taking initiative.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You established the foundation in the US state of Delaware. Why not in Greece?

Nomikos: In Greece, I couldn't be sure the money would remain untouched. Also, being a US charitable foundation means that American taxpayers can deduct any donation from their taxes. It is an incentive for the wealthy Greek diaspora in the US.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And for other nationalities as well?

Nomikos: Any friend of Greece is welcome. Originally, I thought mainly diaspora Greeks would participate. But there has been a huge amount of interest from the business community within Greece. Some companies are marketing their products with our slogan "Debt-free Greece" and pay part of the profits into our campaign.

ABOUT PETER NOMIKOS

Peter Nomikos, 33, is the scion of a Greek family that has been successful in the business world. His father built a billion dollar empire in the US from shipping and medical technology. Nomikos grew up in London and studied economic history at Princeton University. The entrepreneur still lives in the British capital and finances both commercial and non-profit projects. Nomikos says that he spends about 70 percent of his time earning money, the rest he devotes to charitable ventures. With a seven member team he now runs the campaign for a Debt-free Greece. His Santorini beer company, Volkan, contributes 50 percent of its profits to the charity.

As Greece Turns Leftward, Its Tycoons Stay in Background

Andreas C. Dracopoulos, co-president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Πηγή: New York Times

By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and ELENI VARVITSIOTI

May 23 2012

ATHENS — While money pours out of Greek banks, and Europe debates whether Greece deserves its next handout, the people potentially in the best position to help shore up the nation’s finances are mainly keeping their heads down.

They are among the wealthiest Greeks — whether shipping magnates, whose tax-free status is enshrined in the constitution, or the so-called oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth via their dominance in core areas of the economy like oil, gas, media, banking and even cement.

Astute investors, they have been reluctant to lend a hand to the Greek treasury through the risky proposition of buying government bonds. But they have also been slow to dispense funds to philanthropies trying to combat the mounting social ills that their nation’s economic collapse has wrought — drawing a sharp rebuke from the head of a foundation created from Greek shipping wealth, that has become Greece’s largest charitable donor in recent years.Mainly, though, they have done what Greeks from the richest to those of modest means have traditionally done: pay as little as they can in the way of taxes.

Many economists say the oligarchs are a big part of Greece’s economic problem, because they have capitalized on the insular, quasi-monopolistic approach to business that is one reason their nation has long lagged the far more competitive economies of many other euro zone nations.

The moneyed elite in Greece has always been secretive in nature, especially when it comes to its fortunes. Assessing the ultimate value of Greek private sector wealth is a near impossible task, because much of the money exists offshore, secreted away in Swiss bank accounts or invested in real estate in London and Monaco. And now with the country’s top vote-getter, the leftist firebrand Alexis Tsipras, talking more and more about nationalizing companies and industries and, in the words of his top economic adviser, “taxing the rich,” there is even more incentive to lie low.

Of course, the left is not alone in this view.

“Let’s be frank — the well-off need to pay their fair share of taxes,” Bob Traa, the International Monetary Fund’s representative in Greece, said in a speech last year in Athens.

Last year alone, an estimated 8 billion euros ($10.2 billion) in collectible taxes were in arrears — nearly half of the country’s budget deficit.

The nation’s tycoons have every incentive to keep their country in the euro currency union. The question is, are they willing to bear the cost of doing so?

“The oligarchs want to keep the euro — largely because of the banks which are so deeply integrated in the euro system,” said Costas Lapavitsas, an economist at the University of London. “But they are keeping quiet about it.”

But as children go hungry in Greek schools because their parents can no longer afford to feed them and the streets of Athens become home to growing numbers of desperate, jobless people, pressure is mounting on the country’s rich to do what the state can no longer effectively do: write checks.

After all, philanthropy is a Greek word. But with many wealthy Greeks still fearful of showing their financial hand, private giving to date has been relatively meager.

“I get the sense that almost nothing is being done,” said Andreas Dracopoulos, co-president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation which was set up in the 1990s to put to charitable use the winnings of its shipping tycoon founder. “Everyone is saying let someone else do it, and so far I am seeing little action.”

This January, the Niarchos foundation, which describes itself as an international charity with offices in Athens, New York and Monaco, said it would donate 100 million euros to a series of projects aimed at helping Greeks cope with the economic crisis. They include an effort to give food vouchers to help destitute parents feed their children, as well as programs to attack the growing epidemic of homelessness in big cities like Athens and Piraeus.

Shipping analysts guess that the value of Greek shipping assets alone is about $85 billion — although they hasten to add that those assets underpin a substantial debt burden of around 300 billion euros ($380 billion) for the industry, which is heavily dependent on financing vessels that can cost hundreds of millions of euros each. And in the slack global economy, shipping — and shipping magnates — are feeling the pinch.

Thanassis Martinos, a second-generation shipping heir, said his company, Eastern Mediterranean, was having one of its worst years on record and was likely to lose money in 2012.

Still, he and some other shipping billionaires say they are doing their part. In addition to philanthropic giving, Mr. Martinos said it was important that the wealthier Greeks contribute by providing jobs for the country’s increasingly rootless youth, among whom employment is above 50 percent. That is why, despite the slump in his business, he said he had refrained from laying off workers.

“The biggest problem is not feeding young people,” he said. “It is giving them jobs.”

Another rich shipper, who insisted on not being identified because he did not want to draw attention to himself, said that he was providing thousands of free meals to families in and around his ancestral village.

Several shippers said they had also donated to a nascent campaign that is being organized by the trade group that represents Greek shipowners in Athens — although its president, Theodoros Veniamis, declined to say how much money they hoped to raise.

What the shipping magnates are not doing, though, is paying taxes. As with all shipping companies here, for example, Mr. Martinos’s fleet of tankers is based offshore, although the administrative offices are in Athens.

Greece’s income tax revenue is 7.3 percent of gross domestic product, well below the 11 percent average for euro zone countries, according to Eurostat. Even so, there has been little talk by recent governments or even by Greece’s financial backers about imposing taxes on shippers — a move, it is assumed, that would prompt them to take their business elsewhere.

That is a blow Greece would have trouble absorbing. The shipping industry employs about 200,000 people. And it brought in 13 billion euros in foreign exchange in 2010, making it the country’s top single foreign-exchange earner.

Would shipping’s special tax exclusion change under a left-wing government? It is hard to say. Euclid Tsakalotos, a top economic adviser to Mr. Tsipras said in an interview last week that the first thing Mr. Tsipras would do was to “tax the people that past governments have been afraid of taxing.”

Mr. Martinos says such an outcome is unlikely, given shipping’s vital role in the economy. Greek shippers are also some of the country’s largest investors, owning large tracts of real estate and interests in tourism, banking and media.

“I don’t think the policy will change,” he said. “Shipping is a net profit for Greece.”

Many shipowners and other wealthy Greeks are said to take the long view, arguing that Greeks will come to their senses in the next election and not vote in large numbers for Mr. Tsipras if they become convinced that it means a forced march out of the euro zone.

But privately, they cannot ignore the increasingly grim economic and social environment — which is why some have bolstered their already tight security forces by hiring more bodyguards.

Peter Nomikos, a 33-year-old shipping scion, has started a campaign to raise money from Greek businesses and individuals and then, through a foundation he set up in the United States, use those funds to buy back as many of Greece’s deeply discounted bonds on the open market as possible. The plan would be to retire them to help bring down the country’s staggering debt burden, which is now 350 billion euros — 165 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.

Mr. Nomikos is also building a microbrewery on Santorini, the island of his shipping forefathers. He says that he hopes to create a few jobs in the community and that he plans to contribute 50 percent of the profit to the foundation.

“No single person is rich enough to bail out Greece — not least myself,” said Mr. Nomikos, who through his beer company has already bought 100,000 euros worth of bonds at current rock bottom prices of around 15 euro cents on the euro.